


Honorary Dragon

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Background Character Death, Backstory, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mostly Gen, no spoilers for either Flash or Legends, only hints of possible future coldwave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:16:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It's a dragon,” Mick said to his mother.  “I brought him home with me. Can I keep him?”</p>
<p>(in which Mick Rory, age 10, finds a dragon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mick was ten when he found the dragon.

Everyone else said it was just a lizard, but Mick knew better. It had a long, flexible neck and a long, flat head with little bumps that could be the start of horns, with little glands on each side of its mouth that Mick was certain were for fire-making. It had a long, flexible tail that it used for balance - not quite prehensile and able to pick things up, but that might just be lack of practice.

Oh, and it had _wings_. Little wings that stretched back from spurs starting from the joint on its foreleg and looked like they might detach to become fully autonomous one day.

So it was only the size of two palms put together, big deal. It was totally a dragon.

Mick found it on a hot day in summer, when he'd finished all his chores an hour later than everyone else (again) because he'd gotten distracted by something or another the way he always did, and everyone else had gone off to the pond to splash around and cool off without him. In a fit of upset, he'd decided to go the other way instead: a long walk through the uncultivated land between his family’s fields and their neighbors, where there was a jagged gorge that was overcome with weeds and wildflowers and briars that someone ought to have cleared but both sides claimed was the other one's job so no one ever did.

He'd been hot and sticky and miserably regretting his pride when he'd heard a small snuffling noise and turned around to see it nosing its way through the grass.

It was pretty miserable, pulling in audible raspy breaths, curled up tightly around something Mick couldn't see, covered in scratches and hissing desperately at some stray cat that was stalking closer in an unsuccessful attempt to intimidate it away. It refused to budge even as the cat menaced it, lowering its head for a final attempt at defense, its tail lashing around frantically.

Mick burst through the bushes with a yell that caused the cat to scarper off immediately, tail straight with offense as its fun was ruined. He turned to look at the little creature, which had started shaking like a leaf in terror (at Mick?) but refused to budge.

Mick knelt down. "I'm not gonna hurt you," he said in his best soothing tones. His big brother Joey liked to say that Mick's idea of a soothing tone would scare horses and possibly wolves (Mick did not much like Joey), but the little dragon did seem to relax a bit.

It really was in a bad state - scratches all over, some pretty deep, a tear in the gossamer-thin webbing of one wing which hung low and dragged like it was dislocated, one foreleg broken and jutting out at a bad angle and since Mick couldn't see the hind legs, he couldn't confirm if that was the only break.

"You look like someone put you through the wringer," Mick said, still aiming for a soothing tone. "I'm gonna help you, okay? I can patch you up -" Mick had successfully bound up the limbs of several birds and a cat or two under his father's supervision; Mick thought maybe his dad was hoping he'd end up as a doctor or a vet since both Joey and Alex showed considerably more aptitude for farm work than him. "- so you just trust me, huh? I promise not to hurt whatever it is you've got there, either. C'mon..." Mick reached out slowly and carefully with his hands. The little dragon gave a soft little snuffle, like a long sigh, and drooped into Mick's hands.

It'd been protecting an egg, about the size and shape of a chicken egg but a deep golden color, with reddish veins that glittered in the light like rubies. The overall effect reminded Mick of one of Aunt Katie's fancy Fabergé eggs that she liked so much and got so upset when Mick nearly knocked them over, even though it’d been an accident, mostly.

Mick picks up the egg, too, with the dragon making a nervous little whickering sound as it watched, its tail curling around Mick’s hand for stability. Mick held the dragon against his chest with one hand and the egg in the other. The dragon hisses a little, stretching its neck as far as it could in the direction of the egg.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe,” Mick assured the dragon, but the dragon got more agitated until Mick held the egg close to his chest as well and the dragon could drape a wing over it. Mick thought about it for a second. “Is it too cold?” he asked, even though the dragon had no real way to answer. “Chickens need to sit on their eggs. I’ll get it somewhere warm, okay?”

The egg was warm already in his hand, but it’s a _dragon’s egg_ , maybe it needs to be hotter.

Mick very carefully picked his way through the trees and fields back to the house. He grabbed a large plastic bowl and pulled a blanket from the yardline out back where it’s all sun-warmed and fuzzy, tucking it in before putting the egg in. When the dragon still seems upset, Mick put on a kettle and filled a hot water bottle, sliding it in next to the egg. 

The dragon poked at the bottle a little with its good foreleg before making a humming noise that Mick interpreted as satisfaction before trying to clamber up on top of it.

“Oh no you don’t,” Mick said, lifting it off and putting it back on the table. “I need to have a look at the rest of you. Now stay while I get the first aid kit.”

Being as he lived in an active farmhouse with a wide variety of animals and six children under the age of fifteen, four of which were boys, there was a richly stocked first aid kit in the kitchen in addition to the main one in the bathroom and the extra one in the upstairs bathroom.

Mick used a popsicle stick as a brace for the leg (he's probably imagining the dragon's look of offense and sigh of resignation) and dabbed iodine on the cuts and scratches. The dragon hissed with discomfort but didn’t lash out at him, which Mick appreciated. Luckily no other legs seem to be broken.

Mick wasn’t sure what to do with the wing, so he taped it up with medical tape and figured he'd hope for the best until he could get his dad or the local vet to take a look. 

The dragon’s started panting and its wings are drooping even more than before. Mick's reminded of their oldest dog, Rex, whose metabolism isn't the best and who wilts more and more each summer. Mick frowned, then went over to the icebox and pulled out a few ice cubes before returning to the table.

He picked one up gingerly and extended it to the dragon, who looked at it with distrust and hissed at it. 

“Don't worry,” Mick said. “You'll like it, I promise.”

The dragon's hissing subsided and it reluctantly let Mick get his fingers in close without snapping at him. The second the ice touches the dragon's neck, the little creature's eyes snap open and it _trilled_ , a lovely little sound of pleasure, before melting into a happy little puddle on the table as Mick continued to rub the melting ice chips on him, head and neck and back and belly. Mick poured a little of the ice water into a dish and pushed it in front of the dragon. 

“There you go,” he said, pleased, as the dragon started to lap it up. “You're just overheated, s'all - probably taking care of that egg, huh? Can't be your egg, it's half again as big as you.” Mick contemplated the dragon. “Though I can't tell if you're a boy or a girl dragon. Assuming dragons split things up that way.”

By this point, the dragon has been reduced to happy little murmurs which continued undisturbed even as Mick tried to prod at it in an unsuccessful quest to determine its gender. He figured that if all else failed, he could just call it a boy and be done with it. Worst case scenario, he’d figure out the truth if the dragon got pregnant, just like the whole family had with Alex’s pet bird. 

As if summoned, that's when the rest of his family trooped in, loud and boisterous like a herd of drunken elephants; the dragon immediately leapt warily to its feet. “Mickey,” Joey yelled, even though he knew that Mick hated that name. “Have you been sitting here this whole time, you lazy ass?”

Another fistfight is forestalled only by Mick's mother exclaiming, “What on earth is that you have on the table?”

“It's a dragon,” Mick said to his mother. “I brought him home with me. Can I keep him?”

“It's not a dragon, you numbskull,” Joey jeered. “It's just a stupid lizard.”

“He is too a dragon!”

“Stupid lizard! Stupid lizard!”

“You take that back!”

“Boys!” Mick's mom snapped, glancing at the door to make sure Dad hasn't heard the ruckus. Not that he ever cares when it's Mick and Joey getting into it again, even though Joey's the oldest and Mick's the youngest boy but for Nate and everyone knows _he_ was an accident; Dad thinks Mick needs some extra toughening up to make him stop losing focus and zoning out all the time. Mom's still cautious; she probably doesn't want him to start yelling at them all again. “Mick, you can keep the lizard if you want,” she decided. “Joey, stop making fun of your brother for having an active imagination.”

Mick wanted to protest that it's really a dragon, not a lizard, but he wanted to keep his victory before someone wised up and asked Dad about it, because Dad's still all sore up about Mick losing an hour or so to daydreaming when he was supposed to be watching the lame cow and she ended up nibbling on the hedge. Hell, _Mick's_ still sore up about that one after the switching Dad gave him over it. 

Instead of fighting more as Joey clearly wants to, Mick smuggled the dragon and the egg up to his room. He added a few extra blankets around the egg and tried to set up a bed for the dragon, who had exactly none of it and clambered into the egg nest to keep it warm instead. 

Mick settled for having a little bowl next to the nest which he could easily refill with some more ice cubes and cold water from downstairs to let the dragon cool off whenever he wants. 

“I'm gonna have to find something to call you,” Mick told the dragon. “Because unless you've got other plans, I'm gonna keep you as long as I can.”

The dragon purred.


	2. Chapter 2

Mick ends up naming the dragon Leonard after his great-grandfather, who family legend sometimes held to be a pirate. It was the only name Lenny answered to. Well, for Mick anyway.

Mick's siblings call him Snarl, based on his usual method of greeting them, though Ellie's cheerful 'Mr. Snarl' catches on after a while as well. Lenny is very good at walking the line of demonstrating his distaste and wariness of Mick's siblings while not actively biting anyone, which would've brought Mick's Dad's wrath down on Mick's head, despite the fact that Mick privately suspects Joey of trying to goad Lenny into an incident. In fact, Lenny is almost miraculously well behaved whenever Mick's father was around.

Once Mick gets the bright idea of getting some charcoal from the grill and setting up a little oven by his bedroom window and placing the egg there in the glowing coals – he’d let Lenny roll around in them first to make sure he wasn't accidentally baking the egg, but Lenny had murmured approvingly at them and practically rolled the egg over to the new nest himself – Lenny eases up a bit on his constant vigilance and takes to riding around on Mick's shoulder, exploring the house and farm.

Lenny likes the house – once he discovers that their crappy air conditioning unit was where the cold air comes from, he makes a point of plopping down on it, flat on his belly with his wings all stretched out to maximize contact with the cool air as they ripple through the air and a dumb looking grin on his snakey little face – though he has a particular preference for Mick’s room, where Mick keeps the egg, the living room, with the aforementioned air conditioning unit, and the kitchen, where he gets all sorts of snacks snuck to him by every member of the family because no matter what they feel about him, everyone appreciates the ability to “accidentally” drop their least favorite portions of their meal onto the ground where Lenny will dart forward and scoop it up. 

Lenny’s a bit of a thief generally, actually; he likes shiny objects – whether it’s Nate’s new slinky toy or Mom’s earrings – and he has a tendency to bring them back to Mick’s room and pile them around the nest where the egg is. At first Mom had thought it was Mick was taking her jewelry and other odds and ends, which had made her Very Concerned for some reason, and then she happened to come home early one day and caught Lenny red-handed (red-taloned?) trotting right out of her bedroom door with her necklace in his mouth and a vaguely deer-in-the-headlights expression. Mom had been so relieved that she’d even let Lenny keep a few of the pieces she disliked most (“Oh, your Aunt Edith would just _die_ ,” she cackled as she tucked a few ugly but shiny-looking pins into Lenny’s little pile) and Mick had given Lenny a long and serious talk about stealing.

Well, about not getting caught. Close enough. 

Lenny is a little less fond of the farm; he accompanies Mick on his various chores and liked to charge at the various animals (he and one of the more aggressive hens, Marlene, have an ongoing battle that gets reenacted every morning). One of his first tasks upon arriving was to explore every nook and cranny of every building, pen, and field that Mick happened to take him to on the farm, but now that he’s achieved that, he generally prefers to be indoors. Since he above all else prefers to be where Mick is, though, he prefers that _Mick_ be indoors, too. He’s taken to throwing himself down dramatically onto the floor and pretending he’s mortally wounded (wing dragged low, exaggerated limp, sad little drooping head) every time Mick suggests going outside for a bit when it’s not necessary for chores. Mick doesn’t buy it for a minute, since he knows Lenny’s a great big ham, and scoops him up to take him along anyway.

The pond is Lenny’s one exception. Lenny’s not much of a natural swimmer – he _can_ , it’s just that he gets this deeply annoyed scowl-like expression every times he does it which Alex dismisses as just a weird facial tick but Mick is certain represents disdain – but he loves sunning himself one big broad rock right by the pool. If sunning himself is the right term for lolling around on a rock that’s partially shaded by an overhanging tree and positioned just right for the wind to whip around and rustle the leaves and grass by it. But Lenny loves that rock dearly, rolling from the shaded part to the sunny part and back with all evident signs of enjoyment while Mick and his family splash around. 

Mick only took Lenny to school with him once, since the stupid teacher decided that the lizard would scare the girls and thus could not be allowed. The girls in his class – who had all, to a girl, cooed over Lenny, running their fingers down his spine and tail, buffeting his scales with the hems of their shirts, feeling out his little talons with their fingers – were not consulted in this decision-making process, much to everyone’s dismay. 

Lenny never really warms up to Mick’s siblings or parents, but he becomes such a fixture – always perched on Mick’s shoulder or trotting close behind his heels – that they start to get used to him and even begin ignoring his habitual snarling. Mom even starts letting him sit on the counter when no one else is using it or food isn’t being prepared; Lenny likes it because it gives him key access to the fruit bowl. Everyone else approves because the sight of Lenny gnawing on an apple about half the size of him is frankly hilarious. 

Even Dad has to grudgingly admit (after a while) that having Lenny around seemed to be doing Mick a world of good. Mick isn't exactly sure how Lenny always managed to tell when he was getting lost in his own head, but Lenny had a very sharp set of teeth that he was more than happy to try out on Mick's earlobe if the staring was going on too long and Mick needed to get back to work.

Mick's only concern is Joey, who can't seem to stand Lenny for some reason and who torments him at every occasion – poking him with a stick, tossing him in the pond before they knew he could swim, 'accidentally' locking him outside, dropping grimy things into his drinking water, breaking things and trying to blame Lenny. Mick knows Lenny's too careful to knock over Mom's new vase, but since he can't prove it, he bites his lip and takes the yelling and the punishment and instead promises he'll keep a closer eye on Lenny in the future. Lenny is agitated that night, pacing back and forth on the bedspread and hissing angrily.

"S'okay," Mick says, sulking on the bed and trying to ignore how hungry he is. "S'not so bad. Can't do anything about Joey anyway."

Lenny hisses and hops off the bed, darting off into the hallway. Mick starts to get up to follow, then remembers he's confined to his room on pain of more punishment, so he reluctantly lingers back where he is. He hopes Lenny’s not going to get himself into any trouble or run afoul of his brothers – Joey and Alex are the worst, of course, but even little Nate has his issues (mostly being that he doesn’t seem to have learned that Lenny isn’t _edible_ yet).

Lenny returns about an hour later, looking calmer, and hops-scrabbles his way back onto the bed. His wing is looking much better than they had when he’d first arrived, but he hasn't tried flying yet; Mick wonders if he's not old enough or something.

Mick’s deeply relieved that Lenny seems to have returned intact.

"What were you up to?" he asks, tickling Lenny's stomach as his tail lashes side to side in happiness, just like a puppy’s. A puppy with a tail near as long as the rest of him, anyway. “Huh? What were you up to?”

Mick'd swear Lenny smirks at him, but obviously that’s impossible.

About an hour after that, there's a whole bunch of shouting outside Mick's door. Mick warily pokes out his head – careful not to go over the doorway line and violate his boundary line – and sees Alex scurrying around. "What happened?" he asks. 

"Mom found some of Joey's porn stash!" Alex reports gleefully. "He left some out and she saw the corner of it under his door and now he's in trou-ble!" He sing-songs the last word and skips off to watch the ensuing shitshow, because that’s Alex in a nutshell. First one in line to watch every spectacle he can, Alex, without any fear for the consequences or risk to himself.

Mick pulls his head back into his room and closes his door before turning very slowly to look at where Lenny is lounging on his pillow.

Now, Joey’s not a little kid; he’s old enough to _have_ a porn stash – one that he bragged about to Alex and Mick sometimes – and he’d never be dumb enough to leave something so incriminating out where Mom could find it if she were to enter his room. But to leave it _under his door_ where it would be apparent just by her walking by? Impossible.

But Lenny does have a way with slipping under doors…

"That wasn't very nice," Mick says. Well-deserved and just, perhaps, but definitely not nice.

Lenny huffs in disdain.

"You can totally understand everything I'm saying, can't you?"

Lenny lolls around on the pillow, suddenly innocent as a lamb.

"Raise one wing for yes and two wings for no."

Lenny flips his tail at him in a gesture remarkably reminiscent of all the times Mick's flipped the bird at Joey when his parents weren’t looking. 

Mick grins. "I _knew_ you were a dragon," he crows.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time a year and a month had passed, Lenny's about tripled in size until he’s now vaguely the size of a mink or iguana. He still preferred to lounge on Mick's shoulders, which were broadening already, a promising sign for his adulthood that made his Dad compliment himself and which made Joey and Alex sulk and glare at him even though it isn’t Mick’s fault that they weren’t quite as tall as Dad was. The egg is still an egg, but Lenny doesn’t seem concerned, visiting it several times a day to turn it from one side to another or even just to lovingly nuzzle and coo at it. 

That first year, the heat of summer hadn't faded away as expected, to be replaced with cooling rains of early fall and a healthy, bountiful harvest; instead, it had been replaced with a drought that lasted all winter and spring.

It’s now past midsummer, Mick's eleventh birthday come and gone, and the drought and the heat are showing no signs of going away. Tempers run hot as the temperature gage runs hotter, and Mick starts fighting with his dad more and more as his focus starts to deteriorate once more.

He just can't be bothered with thinking about farmwork; he's rekindled an old obsession of the kind that came and went with him: fire. 

Mick has always loved fire: the bonfires in the spring, the fireplace hearth during the winter, the fireworks on July Fourth. He loves how changeable it was, the bright colors and the way the flame flickered, flickered, flickered – you could watch it for hours and hours and it’ll still be changing. Well, Mick could watch it, letting himself sink into a pleasant daze; his siblings thought he was nuts for liking fire as much as he did. But as the fields dry and get overheated by the harsh sun, brushfires start to break out spontaneously all over, drawing all the adults from their fieldwork to put them out and drawing all the excited children to watch the spectacle. Mick’s no exception to that rule.

Mick sneaks matches into his pockets and shows them off to Lenny, coaxing him to try to breathe fire – Lenny mostly coils himself around his rapidly melting ice cubes and glares at Mick for the suggestion, because Lenny worships the gods of air-conditioning and ice and hates things that make him hotter with a religious fervor – and Mick even barters Denny at school his lunch for three days running in exchange for a real lighter, like the ones the high schoolers use to smoke behind the parking lot. He hides it under his pillow.

Joey has by this point gotten old enough both for serious farmwork and also for the school's football team, and the conflicts between the two made him angry and bitter. He argues with Dad about his chances at playing what he calls "real ball" at one of the colleges in the area, which Dad thought was a stupid fantasy and told him they didn't have money for college anyway, not with the harvests coming in like they were and all these kids to feed. These fights usually ended with shouting and Dad giving Joey a few smacks, using the fact that he was bigger and stronger and meaner to cow Joey into submission. Joey had once hissed back that the old man wouldn't be bigger than him for much longer, and that had turned into a row so bad that Mick had cowered in his room, back against the door, flicking the lighter on and off again for comfort. Whenever these arguments happened, Lenny would curl up by his side and rest his flat snake-like head against Mick's thigh, a warm, comforting presence.

Joey usually took out his frustrations by fighting with Mick, with bookish and always-helpful Alex being the exemption to his rage as always. They were closer in age to each other than they were to Mick and had shared a bedroom since infancy; Alex was much more likely to stand as Joey's look-out than to be a useful ally. Nate was still too small to help Mick out and the girls, Mandy and Ellie, might as well have been from a different species for all they cared about the boys' fighting. 

So Mick spent most of that summer sulking and nursing bruises, and even Lenny's tricks on Joey weren't enough to make Mick feel better. Only fire helped, twisting and changing and all-consuming and beautiful. Mick did what he could: matches and his new lighter and brushfires and all. Mick even stole a bit of dad's lighter fluid and hid it in the living room, under the sofa, figuring he could go out later and burn some old the old, decomposing hay that rested in piles by the side of the house. No one would notice something as useless as that going up, surely.

It all came to a head the first week of fall, still blisteringly hot and all the adults grim as the television in the local town diner flashed big red warnings about heatstroke and the risk of wildfire as the leaves started to wither on the trees. 

Mick is out in the garden, supposedly working on the weeding but actually drifting in his own head, not thinking of anything at all, not even flickering fire, when he hears a blood-curling scream from upstairs that snaps him out of it.

He dashes up the stairs and finds Joey clutching at his bleeding face and a pale faced Alex yelling for mom and dad, Lenny arching his back and his wings in his threat pose, hissing angrily and perched on the desk between the boys and the nest with the egg. 

There's a frying pan lying on the ground.

"What are you _doing_?" Mick cries out.

"Your stupid lizard just attacked Joey!" Alex yells back.

"What did you do to him, you fucking bastards?!"

"Language, Mick!" Dad thunders as he comes up the stairs, Mom right behind him. "Now what's going on?"

"The lizard attacked me!" Joey yells, still clutching at his face. "It scratched me up everywhere! I think it might have gotten my _eye_!"

"Lenny wouldn't have done it for no reason!" Mick exclaims, seeing the black look on his father's face. "Joey's never liked Lenny; he's always poked and prodded and hurt him. What were you two doing in my room anyhow?"

"Nothing!" Alex says, but he looks guilty. 

"Alex," Dad snaps.

"We were just gonna play a harmless little joke," he admits grudgingly. "Joey said he was hungry but we'd sold all the eggs for market, so we thought we'd go get the egg that Mickey keeps in his room."

"That's Lenny's egg!" Mick roars. "What did you expect him to do, stand by and let you fry it till it was _dead_? How the hell is that a _joke_?"

"Quiet!" Dad yells, drowning out Alex's rebuttal and Joey's moans and everything else that Mick was yelling about his stupid brothers, most of which was almost certainly filthy enough to get him a switching later on. "Tess, take care of Joey. Mick, the lizard's got to go."

"What?" Mick cries out, stung by the abrupt and utterly unexpected injustice of it. "Why? He didn't do anything but protect himself and his egg!"

"I'm not saying Joey and Alex didn't misbehave," Dad says severely, glaring at them. "And they'll both be paying for it, don't you worry. But we can't have a lizard that attacks people in the house, especially not one who might've blinded Joey right before harvest season."

"And football season!" Joey yells out. Mick personally thinks it couldn't be that bad of an injury if Joey’s still obsessing about his stupid sports, but Joey was playing it up for Mom like a trained actor. 

"That's not _fair_!" Mick protests, gathering Lenny protectively into his arms, but he knows from Dad's face that his decision is made and it's all over but the shouting. Mick does his best – shouting and screaming and even crying, begging that they not make him throw away his best friend – but his father is unmoved. Not even a reminder that Lenny’s been helping Mick focus better helps; Dad dismisses the suggestion immediately, saying that it's not due to Lenny at all but rather Mick just growing out of that awkward stage of not paying attention he’s been stuck in – after all, he says, when Mick was a little kid, he hated looking anyone in the face, and look, he'd grown out of that in due time. 

Mick gets a deadline to get Lenny out of the house by that evening. Weeping, he takes the little deconstructed grill he'd made the hot nest for the egg with in both hands and lets an anxious Lenny drape over his shoulders, licking up the tears streaming down Mick's face desperately like he can make Mick feel better.

He takes them outside, way over the fields to Lenny's favorite sunning rock by the pond. "Dad'll kill me if I try to sneak you back home," Mick explains, sobbing messily and hiccupping every other word. "And as soon as Joey gets better he'll smash the egg just for fun if I keep it, even if he has to come in while I'm asleep. I'd keep you in the school if I could, but they'll just tell Dad about it. I don't want you to go, Lenny, but I can't -" he swallows. "I can't think of – where else you can –" 

He breaks down into tears again, huddling by the rock and clutching at Lenny so tightly that it must hurt, but Lenny keeps rubbing his face along Mick's cheek, running his little claws harmlessly against Mick's arm. He even coughs out a little spurt of flame for Mick's amusement, but Mick was inconsolable. Lenny didn't seem to realize he was being abandoned, for all his cleverness; Mick had to put him off from trying to follow him home by putting him on the egg and running off. 

Mick’s a nervous, sullen wreck at home after that, dragging himself from chore to chore to bed and back without the slightest appearance of interest. He zones out at a moment's notice and not even his Dad's anger at his "whining" can make him stop. 

Joey turns out to be fine, as Mick had expected; he had a few scratches down the side of his face, the closest about two inches away from his eye. He blames Mick for it, as well as for spreading the story that it was from a lizard before he could come up with a more impressive source for his injuries. As it happened, Mick hadn't said a word to anyone, at school or otherwise, but he took his thumping without stirring from the endless lethargy he’d fallen into because he knows if he did start fighting back he wouldn't be able to stop himself until he'd bashed Joey's head into a smear on the pavement or squeezed his throat until his eyeballs burst. Mick has remarkably detailed fantasies on the subject; he'd be concerned about it, but his days were too consumed with fretting about Lenny to really care too much about the possible onset of insanity. 

He didn't dare go back to Lenny's rock. If he found Lenny there, safe and sound, he wouldn't be able to resist bringing him home. If he found Lenny dead or injured, he'd probably lose it and kill his brother. No, he couldn't risk it.

He comforts himself with lighting little fires out back in the yard, almost compulsively, and pretending they were Lenny's. He can’t relax without the fires now; where before it was something fun, something he enjoyed, now it was almost something he needed, viscerally and relentlessly. It’s the only bright spot of his days, his sole comfort, the crutch he can use to keep going, and he needs to see that little flickering light or he starts shaking, something in his chest clutching too tight till he feels like he’s drowning in the thick, hot summer air. He bites his nails in between fire-lighting sessions, gnaws at the quick until sometimes there’s blood, waiting till he can sneak out to look at his fires again.

As the days and eventually weeks slowly drag on, his Mom starts to worry about him, but Dad remains resolute and says that Mick’s just being a baby and trying to punish them with his behavior. He piles on additional chore after chore to make Mick realize that it was time to get over it. At the slow rate Mick works at now, more distracted than ever by just about anything and more likely to start daydreaming if he did, Mick’s now spending virtually all day on hard labor around the farm, any minute that he isn’t at school.

He wakes up at the crack of dawn and works until late into the evening, especially once Joey convinces dad to let him go to football practice instead and make Mick do his afternoon chores instead. Mick falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow each night and wakes up each morning still exhausted. He can barely stomach food, which all tastes like ash on his tongue, but he’s also always hungry, a dull ache in his belly that slowly becomes normal.

Mick’s dad makes Joey’s football practices conditional on all the chores still getting done, and since Mick’s the one doing a whole lot of them, if he doesn’t finish then Joey and Alex have to help out in addition to the football and the schoolwork that otherwise occupies them, despite their claims that high school was infinitely harder than any of the schoolwork that Mick struggled fruitlessly over. As a result, they start watching him during the day, snitching to Dad when Mick’s gone and started daydreaming again, taken a break, or, far worse, fallen asleep when he should be doing some duty or another. The teachers also call home every time Mick’s late to class or falls asleep, making pointed little comments about boys being boys but how they’re not willing to hold up all of class for Mick's "behavioral issues."

Dad starts getting pissed about Mick’s stupid new hobby with the fires, too, saying it's stupid and distracting him even more – matches get snatched out of his hand and if he’s in the kitchen when food’s being made, Mom chases him away from watching her use the stovetop. 

So Mick has to start sneaking out at odd hours to light his fires, filling any break he does manage to squeeze out with them. They’re the only bit of joy he has left: staring into the flames, letting his mind drift off and be at peace. As his days become fuller and then too full, he starts to go out to light his fires at night instead, even though it means that he gets even less sleep than before.

The days start to blur together in a sickening sort of way.


	4. Chapter 4

One night around midnight, having woken himself by force of effort, Mick’s sitting in the living room because it’s so hot outside he might die if he tried to light his fires out there. Instead, he’s gathered up some kindling into the ashtray and lit it up with his lighter, watching the little flame sputter out and die because there’s so little to burn – and that's when he suddenly hears a noise from upstairs.

Mick hastily extinguishes the fire, grinding it out with a cloth, and tosses the remaining kindling behind the couch to dispose of it, crouching down and hiding in the dark as whoever it is pads down the stairs and along the hallway to the kitchen for a glass of water and then returns to bed. 

When they’re gone, he sits back on the couch with a yawn. The kindling is all gone, so there’d be no more real fire tonight...perhaps he'd give himself another fifteen minutes with the lighter before heading off to bed...

Even as Mick drifts away into his own thoughts, a haze of exhaustion and distraction and a lingering sense of sadness that never seemed to end lulling him into a light snooze, he doesn't notice the familiar sound of fire crackling to life. He'd never ended up using that little bowl of lighter fluid he'd grabbed the day before Lenny had been forced out; in fact, he had totally forgotten about it, and about how he'd shoved it under the lip of the back of the couch, covered in the skirt of upholstery that hid the couch's legs. 

He doesn't notice that it had soaked into the skirt by now, or that the kindling hadn't quite gone out entirely when he'd hastily ditched it. He doesn't notice when the corner of the couch lights up, a tiny little flame that creeps silently up the side of the couch until it hits the long, draping curtain right beside it.

He doesn't notice that the large, old moldy haystack had grown so large that it was now leaning against the house, against that window, and even if he had noticed, he would never have expected it to catch fire as quickly as it does, the stages of decomposition creating a natural accelerant that causes the flame to leap forth and dance around to the side of the house in the space of a single breath, turning a small fire into a conflagration within minutes.

Mick doesn't notice anything, actually, sitting there on the couch, feeling hotter and like it was hard to breathe, but that was normal for him nowadays, a fearful, choking sadness that smelled of smoke and crackled like flame.

"Mick!" a hoarse whisper says, and not for the first time. "Mick, wake up!" 

Mick gradually becomes aware of a series of little points of pain all up and down his arm, neck, and ear - little marks that felt almost like Lenny's sharp little teeth -

He blinks and looks around, and there’s Lenny, rearing up on his hind legs and trying to shake him with his little forelegs. His wings had finally fully detached and were mantled out behind him for balance and his tail was lashing from side to side in distress. "Lenny?" Mick says groggily, feeling like his head was too heavy to move or to speak. 

"Mick!" The little whisper came again. "You need to go!"

Mick sits up straighter, blinking slowly as his eyes water and shaking his head in a futile attempt to clear it. "Lenny?" he repeats, finding his throat dry and his voice hoarse. It's thick and foggy in the room. Why is there fog inside the house? "You talk?"

"Only just got large enough. You need to get out to the yard!"

"Sure," Mick says, still dazed and confused, but happy to see his friend and wanting to make him happy. If Lenny wants them to go to the yard, sure, they’ll go to the yard. He gathers Lenny into his arms and staggers up and off the couch and towards the door, feeling far too hot and like he can't breathe. His head hurts. 

There’s smoke everywhere, and he doesn’t know why. It’s hard to see. Hard to breathe. It’s too hot to think.

Lenny dashes out of his limp hands and snakes in between Mick's legs, tripping him. Mick stumbles and falls, but he finds he can breathe a bit better once he's on his hands and knees, crawling forward at Lenny's urging, his head starting to clear and with it the realization slowly starting that something has gone very, very wrong.

"Lenny!" Mick calls pathetically, voice choked up inside his throat, crawling desperately after Lenny, who flies up from the floor with a beat of his wings and turns the doorknob with his cute little foreclaws, digging the claws of his hind legs into the side of the door to power the turn. With a click, it releases and the door swings open as Lenny frantically beats his wings for leverage. The cool air coming through the door feels divine and Mick aims towards that, pulling himself along on his belly when he can’t seem to make himself crawl any more. Finally, Mick makes it out of the house, gasping for air to fill his empty lungs and rolling off the porch, clambering up and going after Lenny, who darts off towards the fields like he had somewhere important to go, but always doubling back to make sure Mick's following him. 

Mick makes it as far as the edge of the fields before something makes him turn back – the flicker of light in the corner of his eye, the crisp night air clearing his head, the smell – and he turns back and that’s when he sees it.

Fire.

It’s so beautiful.

It’s so large and grand; Mick’s never seen a fire like this before. 

Mick collapses onto the ground, staring at the flames that were slowly consuming his house with his mouth agape. He pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, starting to rock back and forth unconsciously as he watches the flames flicker and the house burn, mute with delight and horror and a thousand other emotions he couldn't be bothered to name.

He distantly hears Lenny call his name again, feels his sharp little teeth prick at him again and again, but Mick can’t move, can’t respond, can't tear his eyes off of the spectacle. 

It wasn't until later, much later, after the neighbors have woken up and seen the glimpses of light or smelled the ash blowing on the wind – the billowing smoke cloud, the normal sign of fire in the countryside, was invisible in the darkness of the night – and they'd called the firemen to come help that it occurred to Mick that he should've thought of that, should've called the firemen, should’ve called the police, or at least should've called for his family to come down the stairs and get out. 

The fireman wrapping him up in a blanket says he’s in shock, that that's why his ears don't seem to register sound properly, why everyone sounds and looks distant like they're standing through a thick pane of glass, why his lips tingle and feel numb, why he’s calm one minute and screaming the next, why he starts breathing too fast until his eyes start filling up with dizzying black dots and the fireman has to give him a paper bag to breathe into till he calms down.

It isn't until he's been taken to the hospital, given an oxygen mask and an IV and everything, and after he's slept for going on fourteen hours, that the nurse shakes him awake long enough to tell him his family is dead.

Mick just feels empty when she says it. The world's still glassy and distant and disconnected. 

"Aren't you sad?" the nurse asks, looking annoyed when he doesn't burst into tears like she'd clearly expected. "Don't you care? They're dead, I said, each and every one of them. They're gone. Gone forever, d’you hear me?"

"Good!" Mick cries out in a sudden fit of inexplicable rage, "I hate them! I'm glad they're gone!" and then he turns over and goes back to sleep.

When he next wakes up, the nurse is gone so he can't tell her that he didn't mean what he said and some officious looking older men come in and say that he needs to go talk to a shrink. 

Dad’s always hated shrinks, said they were good for nothing that a strong backbone couldn’t fix, but Mick goes along anyway.

The shrink thinks Lenny's an imaginary friend and that Mick's got undiagnosed depression and anxiety and possibly something else as well, something older and more fundamental that has to do with his inability to focus on the real world and his tendency to drift around in his head so much, and he even suggests that Lenny's bites are actually evidence of Mick self-harming in an attempt to cope, but the nurse – not the same one as earlier – who takes him back to bed hisses the truth at him: that he's a murderer, a psychopathic killer, a soulless pyromaniac that burned his own family alive. That he ought to have been smothered in his crib, that he ought to be dead and them alive: Joey with his promising football prospects, Alex with his head for books and numbers, beautiful Amanda with her first boyfriend, clever Ellen just learning how to properly paint her nails, little Nate who was too young to have done anything wrong. Mom and Dad.

Mick considers the nurse's words and accepts them as true.

It's his fault.


	5. Chapter 5

Mick is put up in his town's one hotel while they try to figure out what to do with him. The rumors have spread through the town like – and the pun makes him smile with its morbidity – wildfire; people rarely say any of them to his face, but adults pull away from him when he goes out of his cramped little room to get something to eat and children blatantly gawk and point and whisper. 

He knows what they’re saying.

Enough people have seen Mick's fascination with fire and his little bouts of kindling that he did out back behind the school whenever he could to make the conclusion of arsonist-murderer-pyromaniac stick even when the shrink and the head of the police and the insurance agent all listen to Mick's story, told to them a million times over with questions and questions and questions answered, and they declare that the fire was an accident. 

Mick's lighter is taken away as evidence, though, and he's not allowed to have any others. Not even matches. The social worker says it's for his own safety, but Mick knows it's because they think he's dangerous.

The stories must've spread through his family, too, because none of them want to take Mick in. The adults who’re watching him don't tell him that, either, but he hears them talking outside his door. The terms "poor child" and "nowhere to go" and "mental illness” and “harder to place" make a regular appearance.

He misses fire.

He _should_ miss his family.

His chest’s still hollow every time he thinks about them, though; hollow and empty and disbelieving, like they’ve just gone down the pond and they’ll be back any minute, loud and boisterous like a herd of rampaging elephants. Surely Joey’s just out at football practice, like always. Alex stayed too long in the library, no surprise. Amanda’s gone on another date, _again_? Ellie and Nate are sound asleep, taking their midday naps, you mustn’t disturb them Mick. Mom’s in the office and Dad’s in the field. That’s where they are, right? Right?

But fire he misses, misses it in his heart and in his head and in his bones, wants to watch it flicker and to think of nothing, wants to burn his hand until he wakes up and feels something like a normal person would.

The rumors persist. 

The adults give him pills, though, and Mick takes them, figuring that they're some sort of thing that you give to criminals to keep them mild. A sedative or something. Alex’d been talking about some book he’d been reading for class about it, about a whole society filled with people that got given drugs to make them happy so they wouldn’t make trouble anymore, and he’d said they used to do that to criminals and maybe still did. 

Instead, he finds that he's able to pay attention to things, things like reading a whole book from cover to cover, which he's never been able to do before unless someone screamed at him every time he stopped. He just kept getting distracted instead. He can keep up a whole conversation without wandering off and watch a whole television show without even once getting the urge to switch the channel. He could probably do all his chores without stopping once.

Not that there are any more chores to be done.

While he's thinking those dark thoughts – and others, about what those nurses said, and the people that whisper to him when no one's looking that he should be dead, too, in punishment for his crimes, whether it means he should be sent to the electric chair to get what's coming to him or maybe by hanging if he's got the guts to do the right thing himself – that’s when there's a scrabbling sound at his window.

At his _third story_ window.

Mick frowns and goes to the window to pull it open, wondering what it might be, if it’s a robber or maybe a misdirected bird. As soon as he opens it, Lenny tumbles inside, larger than before and hissing in annoyance. 

"Lenny!" Mick exclaims, delighted and relieved and surprised. "You're okay!"

" _I'm_ okay?" Lenny hisses back grumpily. "You're the one that nearly got flash-fried!"

Mick sits down right where he's standing, legs unable to hold him any longer, right there on the floor by the open window. "You really can talk," he says dumbly. "The shrink said I was making that up."

"Of course I can talk," Lenny says, sounding affronted. "I'm a _dragon_."

Mick smiles weakly. "Shrink said I was making that up too." He takes a deep breath, nearly a sob. "I missed you."

Lenny crawls into his arms and lets Mick hold him and shake apart – quietly as he can, so no one will come in and separate them again. 

After what feels like forever but is probably less than an hour, Mick finally takes a long, deep, shaking breath, wipes the tears and snot off his face, and almost feels human. "So," he says. "How's the egg?"

"She's good," Lenny says, sounding pleased that Mick asked, or maybe he always sounds that way when talking about his egg. "I hid her in a burrow with the charcoal you gave me; I keep it lit with my breath."

"It's a she?" Mick asks. "You can tell?"

"Of course I can tell," Lenny replies haughtily. "She's my sister."

"I knew you were too big to be her mom," Mick says, pleased in retrospect that he was right. "What's her name?"

Lenny blinks at him. 

Mick arches his eyebrows at him. “Well?” he prods. “What’s her name?”

"Well, _I_ certainly don't know what it is!" Lenny protests. "How do you pick 'em, human-style?"

Mick sighs and starts listing off all the names he knows. Lenny ends up picking the name Lisa and looks very pleased with it, trilling lightly to himself. "It's a good name," Lenny says. "Nice and strong. Is she a Snarl, too, like me?"

"A...Snarl?"

"Like you're a Rory," Lenny explains. "Mick Rory, Mr. Mick Rory. Same way I’m Mr. Leonard Snarl. You have no idea how difficult all your human naming conventions are to figure out, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it. Family nests all go by the same second name, right?"

"Yeah," Mick says, throat dry. "Except I'm the only Rory left. The others all died."

"But you're alive," Lenny says. "Are you sad?"

"Yes," Mick says. "Very sad. I think. Sometimes. Most of the time I don't know what I feel."

Lenny gives a comforting little trill and rubs his head against Mick’s cheek. "It was like that when my dam died," he says. “Sometimes it takes time to get the feelings out. Don’t worry about it.”

"What happened to her?" Mick asks. He's never known anything about Lenny's past. 

Lenny shrugs, a whole-body affair. "My sire happened," he says darkly. "To her and to us. We weren't fit children, in his view, so he was going to cull me and smash Lisa."

Mick pulls Lenny in close. "That's awful," he says honestly. He’s a farmer’s son – _was_ a farmer’s son – and he knows what culling means, how Dad would shake his head in disappointment and take the littlest runts out back and make sure they were no more. He can’t imagine anyone doing something like that to Len, who’s perfect the way he is.

"It happens," Lenny says. "I like being here with you better anyway. Better than all his tests you're set up to fail and his stupid endless lessons. Shoulda known he was gonna try to cull me long before he went and actually tried it, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it, you know? Stupid. Yes, you’re much better to be around."

Mick makes a face that's supposed to be a smile but he thinks is more of a grimace. "Well, I may not be around all that much longer," he says, and explains what he was thinking, what all the people have been saying, how it’s only fair that it all go down that way in the end.

Lenny listens to him, lets him get it all out, every dark and bitter thought spat out of him until the bile is out there in the air instead of bubbling inside of him, and then Lenny goes and bites Mick soundly on the finger, eliciting a yelp of pain from Mick. "Don't you ever think any of that crap again," Lenny says firmly. "You're mine and you're not gonna go anyway, you got that? So your old family nest is gone. That’s sad. So’s most of mine, which is also sad. Fine. It don’t mean you’re alone. You can join my nest, me and Lisa’s, but that means you don't get to even think about dying and certainly not about making yourself die. Promise?"

"I promise," Mick says from where he's sucking on his wounded and bleeding finger. It's not going to actually take care of the problem, of all those dark thoughts he has sometimes, he knows that, but maybe he'll say something to his social worker about the harassment, try to get the adults to make everyone else get off his back a bit. Now that he has a reason to live, he really should get about the business of doing it. Living is hard: you need to do more than survive the present moment like he's been doing. You need to also plan for the future. "Say, how much larger are you gonna get?"

Lenny had grown again - less mink-sized, more raccoon or even a small dog. 

"Oh, I contain multitudes," Lenny says casually.

"That's a quote from something," Mick says suspiciously.

"I watch a _lot_ of television at the diner while you're busy at school," Lenny admits. "Oh, and I know how to play cards now."

Mick snickers at the thought of little Lenny learning counting cards from drunken card sharks that go to the diner when the gambling den’s closed. It may be the first time he's laughed since the incident. "But no, really. How big? Too much bigger and I won't be able to sneak you around with me."

"I grow pretty big," Lenny admits. "But you won't need to worry - as soon as I get enough mass, I'll be able to camouflage."

Mick mistakenly thinks he means like a chameleon. 

About a year later, when he's thirteen and on his third foster home already, and Lenny’s the size of a dog that has to slink around the alleyways because Mick can’t bring him into the house lest people think he’s an alligator, he learns that what Lenny _actually_ means is "turn into a human being." 

He also learns that Lenny is _terrible_ at it.

"You forgot the scales on the face again!" he hisses as he yanks the almost-human Lenny into a closet. "And your eyes are still slitted!"

"I'm working on it!" Lenny complains. "I'm raising an egg full time, you know."

"You sit on that egg and watch daytime television all day when the grown-ups aren’t home! How long till Lisa's born, anyhow?"

"Eggs take a while to incubate," Lenny says. "So, uh, three days?"

"Three day - Lenny! You should've said something!"

"I only just found out myself! That's what I came here to tell you." 

Mick keeps lighting fires, though, because he can’t seem to stop, and Lenny’s the only one who doesn’t judge him for it, even coughing out little flames for him when all of his other tools have been confiscated despite Lenny’s continued love affair with all things chilly. The foster parents become less and less sympathetic; the social worker he had in the beginning has moved on to other cases and the new ones he gets are always talking about fixing him behind his back, like there’s something fundamentally broken inside of him.

It’s not that Mick disagrees, mind you, it’s just that he resents them trying to do it without consulting him. He builds himself back up as best as he can with no one’s help but Lenny’s, and with little Lisa’s, too, when she crawls out of her egg, blind as a bat and immediately the most precious little thing Mick’s ever seen in his life. Lenny’s as proud as a peacock over her, boasting about how long her tail is and how sleek her wings like it’s something he helped make happen himself. Mick can’t blame him; he’s a bit like that about her, too. 

Lenny’s sixth sense for Mick’s emotional state remains top-notch, except now he likes to use his larger mass to sit on Mick every time he starts thinking his dark thoughts again. It’s both incredibly annoying and rather useful: Mick has to come up with excuses to tell his new foster parents as to why he’s covered in dragon-shaped footprints (Lenny’s graceful when he moves, but a giant lump when he sits) and the one that works best is that he’s gotten a job helping out at the auto shop and keeps dropping wrenches at each other. To keep up the disguise, he actually does get a part-time job there – Lenny suggests it, mostly by virtue of talking endlessly about “the place with the sparks” until Mick figures out what he’s referring to – and finds that he kind of likes having something to do with his hands again, and that he prefers steel and rubber to any of the chores he had to do on the farm.

He tries not to think too much about his family. One day, months afterwards, just as Lenny predicted, he just sits down and starts crying and doesn’t stop for a whole day, and it happens a handful of times. To Mick’s surprise, it’s not the big things that make it happen, like the funerals, but rather the little things that spur it: the foster family watching a football game with the college Joey wanted to go to, someone selling Ellie’s favorite flavor of ice cream, a baby crying that sounds just like Nate, things like that.

When he thinks about them too much, he sets fires. It’s not exactly a healthy way to honor them (Lenny and his social worker agree), so he tries not to think about them too much.

Of course, he sets fires anyway. 

Eventually, something important enough burns and he gets the blame, and this time there isn’t a tragedy to excuse him, so he gets himself tossed into juvie at age fourteen. Lenny – his human form by now perfected, a sharp-edged face that has the same reptilian smirk as always and which Mick finds disturbingly attractive – follows him in, somehow talking his way around his lack of identification papers, Mick doesn’t know how. Lisa – still small and reptilian and voiceless – sneaks in through a window and curls up in Mick's lap, wordlessly demanding petting that Mick is more than happy to provide. 

Lenny finds them there a few hours later, looking annoyed.

"What's up?" Mick asks. "You can't get them to room us together?" 

Honestly, Mick was far more concerned about Lenny’s lack of ID. Images of FBI bursting in and taking Lenny away to ask him questions have been circling around in his mind – even putting aside questions about whether they’d want to ask him questions about being a dragon, because as far as Mick knows the government knows all about dragons (didn’t he read something once about lizard people in the government?), but Mick _does_ know that the government men really hate people who don’t have proper identification papers. The farm workers who’d come by and help out each year for the harvest had been very clear about that. He’d ask Lenny about how the bit with the IDs went, but Lenny had told Mick that he'd bite him if he asked about that again for the fiftieth time, so Mick tries to elide the question instead.

"No, no problems there," Lenny says. "It all worked out fine. But they misspelled my name!"

"That happens a lot," Mick says wisely. "Remember the documentary on Ellis Island that was playing last week? I know you watched that."

Lenny scowls, but nods, conceding the point. "Hey, Lise," he says, reaching out to pet her. "Guess we're going by Snart instead of Snarl now." 

"Snart?" Mick echoed. " _Really_?"

"Apparently there's a policeman in the force by that name," Lenny tells him. "Lewis Snart. He's a drunk, from what I hear. I may try to convince him we're his kids, once Lisa's old enough to play a believable human."

Lisa flicks her tail insultingly at her brother.

"But everything else, it worked?" Mick asks anxiously. "You can stay? They're not gonna –" He stops, but he knows Lenny can put together the rest of the sentence: they're not going to take you away again, are they?

"Nope," Lenny says, sliding into the bed next to Mick and putting his head on Mick's shoulder. He had a tendency to rest himself around Mick's shoulders: his head, his arm, a leg if Mick was lying face down, all in just the same way as he used to ride on Mick's shoulder in his draconic form when it was small enough. Like those big dogs that think they can still do the same things they did when they were puppies. Mick figures that he’ll be able to get Lenny to squeal from joy once he introduces him to the concept of piggy-back rides; he’s been saving it up for a special event. "I can stay with you."

Lenny’s draconic form was now about as big as a small pony, and apparently not done growing, so it was probably all for the best that he stuck around in his human shape instead. Mick has visions of a rhino-sized Lenny trying to climb onto Mick’s shoulders, which means he really needs to get around to growing into his full height and maybe starting to work out some more. That, or he should break this habit of Lenny’s before he gets to be the size of a house or something. He can’t quite bring himself to, though, because it’s both comforting and deeply funny. (Nearly as funny as Lenny’s very cat-like hatred of proper chairs and inexplicable love of cardboard boxes of any kind. That, Mick personally finds to be so deeply hilarious that it needs to be recorded on a thousand different Polaroid pictures.)

"That's good," Mick says, voice rough. He cleared his throat. "That's very good."

"Don't worry, Mick," Lenny drawls with a smile. "You're family now. We're never leaving you alone again."

With that pronouncement, he purses his lips and blows a small jet of fire into the air, letting it linger like a bubble for a second before burning up. 

"Family, huh?" Mick says, smiling. He knows this refrain, knows how much joy Len gets out of repeating it.

"Yep," Lenny says. "You're an honorary dragon now."

Mick grabs his lighter where he’s hidden it under his pillow and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Oddly enough, minus the dragon, this fic turned out to be my headcanon of Mick Rory's backstory. Mind the warnings and remember canon.


End file.
